The Pentagon leaks reports estimating that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stand
on the border to Saudi Arabia in preparation for an invasion of the world's major oil fields.
Soviet satellite photos however show no such build-up, Iraq denies it, and the US government
has refused to release its alleged evidence for such a build-up.

The US goes to war with Iraq. One of the main selling points of the war was the story of
'312 premature babies at Kuwait City's maternity hospital who died after Iraqi soldiers stole
their incubators and left the infants on the floor,' and of 'babies pulled from incubators
and scattered like firewood across the floor.' (these are the words of Bush, who referred to the
incident six times in one month in order to justify the bombing). This story was in fact a
fabrication by the PR firm Hill and Knowlton, who were paid between $12-$16 million by Kuwait's
emirocracy to promote its interests in the US. In actual fact the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was
virtually bloodless.

Immediately following the Sept 11 attacks, Rumsfeld urges aides to start thinking about
attacking Iraq, asking for the 'best info fast' to 'judge whether good enough
to hit SH [Saddam] at the same time, not only UBL [bin Laden].' and demanding that
the administration's response 'go massive ... sweep it all up, things related and
not.'

General Wesley Clark receives a call on 9/11, saying 'You got to say this is connected.
This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' He
responds 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?', and never
receives any evidence.

The White House is forced to issue a retraction of the erroneous conclusions Bush
drew from both some satellite photos and a UN report regarding Iraq's supposed nuclear
rearmament, after he erroneously claimed that the report claims Iraq is six months away
from developing nuclear weapons, and that the satellite photos show evidence of construction
on nuclear sites.

The Bush administration leaks information to the media in September about Iraq's
attempt to import aluminum tubes, which administration officials and Tony Blair claim can be used
to enrich uranium and are headed for Iraq's nuclear program, even though US Government experts think
otherwise. The International Atomic Energy Agency denies outright the possibility of such use.

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter claims Iraq is not a threat, citing the fact
that 'Iraq, during nearly seven years of continuous inspection activity by the
United Nations, had been certified as being disarmed to a 90 [percent] to 95
percent level ...'.

The CIA Director George Tenet claims it is far from clear that we will be safer
by attacking Iraq. He writes 'Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line
short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical and biological
warfare against the United States.', saying that only if attacked would Iraq use
whatever weapons of mass destruction it has.

Iraq releases its weapons declaration. Before releasing it to the public however, the US
Government confiscates all 12,000 pages, saying they contained 'sensitive information' which
needed 'a little editing'. Sensitive indeed. The original Iraqi documents listed 150 American,
British and other foreign companies that supplied Iraq with its nuclear, chemical and
missile technology, many of them in illegal transactions. In 2000 Peter Hain, then a
Foreign Office Minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of
lawbreaking British companies. He has never explained why.

Bush signs an executive order formally creating the Office of Global
Communications, which has been working informally for the previous six months
trying to spread the U.S. message in sceptical parts of the world.

Public opposition for the war continues to grow. With only Australia, US and Britain going
to war, the Australian Prime Minister receives a
vote of
no-confidence (the first ever to be made an Australian leader) for sending
troops to Iraq without reference to parliament and
with the majority of Australians against such an action, and even the British public doesn't
support the war, with over 90% polled as being against going to war without a new UN
resolution.

The claim that Saddam gassed his own people, one of the most cited proofs of
Saddam's evilness by the Bush Administration (for example, Bush cited it in his
second
State of the Union address) is put into question in a New York Times article.

The
article notes that an investigation by the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency concluded
it was gas released by Iran - not Iraq - that killed the Kurdish civilians.
This appears to lead to one of either two conclusions - either Saddam is in fact
not responsible, or the US government was trying to cover up the tragedy at the time.

Colin Powell's
long dossier of Iraq's alleged non-compliance comes under
withering attack from the chief UN weapons inspectors, saying they found several elements of
his evidence either false or unconvincing.

Observer reveals US spying on the UN delegates from all of the 'swing' countries
(Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Bulgaria, Chile and Pakistan) and possibly others, looking
for any information regarding which way the members might vote, or that could help the
US put pressure on these countries to vote for a resolution authorising a war against Iraq.
The UN launches an
investigation into the spying.

Rumsfeld, Bush and Blair make the claim that Iraqi footage of British prisoners of war
violates the Geneva Convention, and in doing so largely prevent it being showed on US TV.
They seem to forget that they themselves have been showing similar images - the Red
Cross confirms that Iraq is violation of the Geneva Convention in showing the prisoners,
but no more than the US is also, and notes that these rules should have also been applied
to images of PoWs at the US base of
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The Arab League ministers meeting in Cairo pass a resolution declaring the war on Iraq a
"violation of the United Nations Charter" and a "threat to world peace", and demanding
unconditional withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq. The resolution is
adopted unanimously by the 22-member League except for key US ally Kuwait, making the
Bush Administration's
claims that Iraq poses a threat to its neighbours sound somewhat hollow.

The US Government blocks calls for a public investigation into pre-war US intelligence and
allegations that the White House exaggerated the threat (following the failure of US combat forces
to find evidence of any WMDs since conquering Iraq).

This issue really belongs to the second Gulf War section but was separated because
it is worth looking into in more depth - not only for the fact that the war was launched
partly on the basis of this false claim, but also that the Bush Administration
appears to have known it was false, yet denies this, spinning an intricate web of deceit
in the process which needs a bit of work to untangle.

A US diplomat travels to Africa under order's from Cheney's office to determine
the truth of the claims, and reports back to the Bush Administration, concluding
that the government had not contracted to sell uranium to Iraq, and that the
documentslater presented as evidence of Iraq's nuclear program are
forgeries.

The CIA tries unsuccessfully to persuade the British government to drop from an official
intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. Bush's
State of the Union address would later reference this very paper!

Other sources say that the claim was included in early drafts, and attributed to American
intelligence, but when intelligence officials urged the removal of the information due to
doubts about it, the speechwriters, attributing it to the British report instead.

Still other sources say that the claim was originally included, then removed after intervention
from George Tenet, only to be later reappear in the speech. This story would appear to
reconcile the above two stories.

In any case, despite being considered 'hardly believable' by the intelligence community at the
time, the claim appears to have been only included due to pressure from Cheney,
Rumsfeld, and Robert G. Joseph.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shoots down allegations Iraq tried
to revive its nuclear arms program and says fake documents backed US claims Baghdad had tried
to buy uranium to make bombs. He also reiterates that 'After three months of intrusive
inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a
nuclear weapons program in Iraq.'

The IAEA also reports the fake documents are so badly forged that, in the words of one
official, his 'jaw dropped'. This makes it hard to believe that the US government was the
honest victim of the forgery in making their claims regarding Iraq's nuclear program. The
IAEA also ask the US and Britain if they had any other evidence backing their claims that
Iraq tried to buy uranium. The answer given is no.

A British parliamentary commission reports it was unclear why the British government
asserted as a 'bald claim' (in a dossier published four months prior to Bush's speech)
that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium
in Africa. It notes that the CIA had already debunked this intelligence at the time.

At the same time, Rumsfeld also changes the official reason for the war -
not fresh evidence of banned weapons, rather a changed perspective following Sept 11.
This of course flies in the face of all of their claims of fresh evidence (such as the
uranium claim under discussion) which were used to prove the urgency of attacking Iraq
when they did, as well as Rumsfeld's own reaction to September 11th.

CIA director George Tenet becomes the scapegoat, taking all of the blame for the
inclusion of the claim in Bush's speech despite doubts about the
quality of the intelligence behind it.

Despite admitting that the CIA should have had the claim removed, he holds to the argument
that it was 'factually correct' in that it referenced a British report (despite the CIA having
told the British Government before the speech that this report was inaccurate!).

Given the implausibility of the idea that Iraq in any way threatened the US militarily, even
if it were to have WMD, the only way Bush could justify his pre-emptive war,
while at the same time turning the public's fear+anger over September 11 onto Iraq,
was to link Saddam with Al-Qaeda, the idea being that Saddam could potentially supply terrorists
with WMD with which they could then attack America. This section examines just how well
he succeeded in putting forward this fancy.

CBS, after interviewing a CIA agent who debunked the report of the meeting, reports that 'Despite
a lack of evidence that the meeting took place, the item was cited by administration officials as
high as Vice President Dick Cheney and ended up being reported so widely that
two-thirds of Americans polled by the Council on Foreign Relations believe Iraq was
behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11.'.

Rumsfeld claims 'There are al-Qaeda in a number of locations in Iraq'
receiving shelter from Saddam's regime, suggesting that the Administration is merely
waiting to reveal ironclad evidence of the link between Saddam and the al-Qaeda.

CIA complains that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some
intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order
to strengthen their political argument for war. FBI investigators are also baffled by the Bush
administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network.
'We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't
think it's there' a government official said.

BBC obtains a top-level report from British intelligence that states flatly
that there are no current ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Blair
denies
having seen the report and continues to insist there are links.

A 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory' in Iraq,
presented by Powell
as evidence of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, is found to be nothing of the sort. It
also lies outside the area controlled by Hussein, lying in the northern Kurdish region which
is protected by US and British warplanes. It is run by the Islamic fundamentalist group Ansar
al-Islam, which has a history of opposing the secular Hussein.

Apparently getting desparate to invent the link, Colin Powell claims that a
tape of Bin Laden, in
which Bin Laden calls Saddam Hussein and his regime as infidels, is proof of a link between
the al-Qaeda network and the Iraqi government, simply because Bin Laden calls for support
of Iraq.

The report of the joint
congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, reveals US intelligence
had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that
it had supported al-Qaeda.

Just three days following Cheney's most recent insinuations of a connection between
Saddam and 9/11, Bush admits that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, contrary
to popular belief. The White House denies ever having claimed
any Iraq-Sept. 11 links.

While at Camp David, Tony Blair says to President Bush (referring to Iraq)
'We haven't the faintest idea what has been going on in the last four years
... other than what we know is an attempt to carry on rebuilding weapons.'.

The British government releases its first dossier - 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction -
The assessment of the British Government'.
According a suddenly much more
confident Blair, 'The assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued
to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons,
and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme'.

The British government releases its second dossier, depicted as an up-to-date and highly unsettling
assessment by the British intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts
to hide its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international
efforts to force it to disarm. It is paraded
by Tony Blair and Colin Powell as quality research and a searing indictment of Saddam's regime.

This second dossier is soon found to be largely based on a 12-year-old
PhD thesis posted on
the internet, with only minor propagandistic modifications, such as 'monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq'
having become 'spying on foreign embassies in Iraq', and 'aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes'
turned into 'supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes'.

A row erupts between the British government and the BBC over a BBC report that the government
'sexed up' the September dossier in reporting that Saddam could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes
of an order. The BBC refuses to back down from the claim or to name the source.

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs committee rules that the first dossier had undermined
the government's case for war because it contained material plagiarised from a 12-year-old graduate
thesis found on the Internet.
The September dossier, the committee says, gave undue prominence to an uncorroborated claim that
Saddam's troops could deploy chemical and biological weapons at 45 minutes notice. It also contained
an incorrect claim that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium in
the African nation of Niger.

David Kelly, the source for the BBC's claims that the Government 'sexed up' the September dossier,
is found dead, following in his words 'intolerable pressure' put on him by politicians during the row
between the BBC and the government.

John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), the body responsible
for drawing up the dossier, admits during the Hutton inquiry that the 45 minute claim only
referred to battlefield munitions, rather than strategic weapons (i.e. missiles) as it was
at the time taken to mean (and appears to mean given the context - the document
talks about the Iraq's ballistic missile program 'capable of reaching Cyprus, Eastern Turkey,
Tehran and Israel' just two paragraphs above the 45 minute claim, and it was this connection
that the headlines made the next day).

When John Scarlett is asked why they failed to correct the headlines which reported the
misinterpretation, he answers ' it is not my immediate responsibility to correct headlines
and if I did that, I certainly would not have time to do my job.'.

The final conclusions for the inquiry have not been yet reached. However, in addition to the above, it
has already revealed a lot of dirt in the government's scapegoating of David Kelly, lead to spin-doctor
Alister Campbell's resignation, and caused
public
trust in the British Government to plunge (only 24% trusting Blair down from 74% at the start
of his term). Follow this Guardian report for the latest information.